Super Bomberman R Review

Super Bomberman R Review.

Back when the Switch launched in March 2017, the line up of games was a little sparse save for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But among the somewhat meager line up, there was Super Bomberman R, the first game in the series since Battlefest on the Xbox 360 in 2010. It's a simple formula: traverse a maze like structure and blow up all the enemies without being blown up yourself. Multiplayer sessions of any Bomberman game can get extremely intense, with the tiniest mistake being the difference between victory and defeat. But its kind of difficult to translate this feeling of excitement into an engaging single player mode.

As far as the story goes in R, it's essentially a Saturday morning cartoon from the 90's: a big bad guy called Emperor Buggler shows up and wants to take over the universe, so he takes control of 5 powerful robots, called the 5 Dastardly Bombers to help him. Its then up to the Bomberman Bros to stop the Bombers and Buggler. Each of the Bombermen has their own personality traits, for example White is always diligent and wanting to get things done, Blue is always asleep and Yellow is carefree and easily distracted. And yes, each one of the main characters is named after what colour they are, which must be some of the laziest naming I've ever seen. Despite how unique in personality the Bomberman Bros are, they all play exactly the same, which is fine since the gameplay of the series has always been consistent in its simplicity.

There are 6 worlds in total during the main story, plus a bonus world after the credits roll., each world except for world 6 consist of 10 stages, the last two being the boss of that particular world. The regular stages add some variety other than just kill all enemies, some levels ask you to hit a number of switches, while some ask you to escort hostages to a safe area. While these variations are nice they can be a little tricky at times. Luckily death is fairly meaningless, I played through the entire game on Veteran difficulty which is the games normal mode and while the difficulty did spike at random points in the game, once you lose all your lives and get a game over, the game offers you the chance to respawn with all your lives for 300 coins, and you start the game with a sizable amount of coins so it isn't a big deal. Besides, if you get a game over twice in one world then the game decides to respawn you for free as much as you want for the rest of the world. You also get coins for finishing each world, making game overs more of an inconvenience than a genuine worry.

The bosses are the highlight of the story for sure, there are two stages to each boss: the first being a regular deathmatch against one of the enemy bombers, these can actually be quite difficult since its like fighting an AI opponent on the hardest difficulty and they have unique bombs with properties like magnetism or random explosion times. The second part of the fight is when the bomber pilots a giant mech and you just have to bomb the hell out of it while avoiding its attacks. The world 6 bosses are the best of the entire game, but definitely not the hardest even though they fill most of the screen. Even the bonus world boss is kind of a pushover which was a little disappointing. One thing that caught me off guard was the credit music, it wasn't bad or anything but I just felt it was completely out of place. 

But if we're honest, anyone who's playing a Bomberman game for the story isn't playing for the right reason, the multiplayer is where these games shine and thankfully the multiplayer is still as solid as its ever been. Unfortunately Super Bomberman R isn't quite as customisable as previous online games in the series, as you were able to toggle specific items on and off and tailor the game exactly to your needs, in this game however you're basically stuck with what you get, which is fine but it would've been nice to have some options. Online matches work well and are lag free, but sadly I've yet to get into a 4 player online match, only being able to duel against one other player. I imagine there were lots more people around the games launch, but trying to find a full lobby now won't always be easy. Although this can easily be remedied by local multiplayer battles with up to 8 players on one system, and while I haven't tried this feature out myself, I have played large Bomberman games in the past and they are a blast (no pun intended) so I imagine the same holds true here.

Overall, Super Bomberman R is definitely competent in terms of Bomberman games but it is marred by random difficulty spikes, game overs that don't incentivize you to play better and an online feature that while functional, lacks staying power due to the low player count. The worst thing about this game though is the price; the game mentioned at the beginning of this review, Bomberman Battlefest on Xbox 360 was around £10 which was a steal. But Super Bomberman R at launch was £50. Fifty. Pounds. It's kind of cheaper now if you shop around but for what you get, the price is absolutely insane. So if you're interested and intend to play local multiplayer somewhat frequently, definitely pick this up since you'll get a lot of fun out of it. Otherwise you may want to reconsider. 

Besides, I'm still waiting for a sequel to Bomberman Generation. 

Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition Review

Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition Review

Back in 2011, developers People Can Fly (mostly known for the Painkiller series) and Epic Games released the original Bulletstorm on the 7th generation of consoles to a mostly positive critical reception. I remember playing the original and having a really good time with it. But I remember once I'd finished with the story mode, I never went back to it. So when I saw that the remaster was reduced by a sizable amount on the PlayStation store, I decided to go back in and see how this game holds up.

When the remaster first released in April 2017, I wasn't too excited by it. If anything, I was hoping more for a sequel than a remaster so I quickly forgot about it. However when I saw the game on sale for £16, I thought 'why not?' and picked it up. Full Clip Edition is a remaster in the truest sense of the word, nothing has been done to the game as far as gameplay goes, for better and worse, and all that's really been done is a graphical upgrade to current gen standards. I should also briefly mention that I got the Duke Nukem DLC with the game, and it isn't worth it at all. It just seems like an excuse for Gearbox Publishing to say "Hey look! We own the Duke Nukem IP! Feel the nostalgia!" All they do is replace the main character with Duke Nukem, and that's it. The other characters dialogue stays the same, so they're always calling Duke 'Grayson' and it just gets annoying. But at least they got John St. John to do the voice, so that's something at least.

The best way I can describe Bulletstorm is a linear, arcade style FPS that encourages creativity in killing your enemies. This creativity can be achieved in a number of ways; whether its shooting an enemy in the throat and seeing them choke to death, or kicking a group of enemies into a rotating helicopter blade and watching as meat-confetti rains down. These creative ways to kill are called Skillshots, and every time you get a Skillshot you are awarded a number of points based on how complex it is, or if its the first time you've done that particular shot. Weapons are your standard FPS fair, you start with a carbine that can get you through most situations but later on you get a pistol, a quad-barreled shotgun and a sniper rilfe. The two most unique weapons are the the Flailgun and the Penetrator; the Flailgun shoots out a chain with two explosives at each end, sticking to walls or wrapping around enemies, and the Penetrator, which is essentially the Cerebral Bore from the Turok games, firing a high speed drill into the enemy sending them into the sky. Although in Turok it just drilled into the dinosaurs brain. Lovely.

In Bulletstorm you're encouraged to be constantly moving; save for one or two sections the combat areas are large and have plenty of cover to slide between. Early on you also get a leash, which is like some kind of energy whip you can use to get supplies, but also pull enemies out of cover and closer towards you. This can set up some great Skillshots if done at the right time and in the right situation. Overall the way the game actually plays is really good, all the weapons feel powerful to use and if used correctly, the leash can instantly take an opponent out of a firefight. The one complaint I have about the gameplay, and I suppose its a small complaint but there is no jump button. For a game that's all about creative kills, surely being able to jump would help. Just imagine sliding into a piece of cover, only to then seamlessly jump onto it, launch yourself up high, kick an enemy in the face then blow his body in half with a shotgun blast. Sadly that'll never happen in Bulletstorm and it should've been able to. I mentioned earlier that you can use the leash to get supplies from supply drops littered around the world, and you can only get these supplies if you have enough points from Skillshots you've performed which reinforces the fact that you need to get creative in your battles. Its a good, balanced system although I never really found myself low on ammo or Skillshot points, and these supply drops are all over the place. 

You'll probably have noticed that I haven't mentioned the story at all during this review, and that's because it is such a bland revenge plot, the characters aren't that likable, there is constant swearing throughout which I wouldn't normally mind, but its like when you first discover a swear word and just keep saying it in conversation because you think its funny. That's what this games story feels like. There is also a really bad sequel hook at the end of the campaign, and as we know, we never got a sequel.And while you wouldn't expect the story in a game called Bulletstorm to be world class, having one of the characters threaten to "kill your dick" does make you wonder why they thought this was passable. But hey, this is a remaster, not a remake.

As far as graphics go, I'm no Digital Foundry but it's obviously a good looking game which can maintain what looks to be 60 frames per second. When things aren't too frantic. Unfortunately, when you get more than around 5 enemies on screen and shooting/charging towards you, there is a noticeable dip in the framerate. However there were two moments that stood out to me; one was loading into a new area and the framerate plummeted to what seemed like it was barely hitting 20, and the other was near the end of the game during an intense firefight in an enclosed space and the game literally just stopped for nearly 5 seconds. It was just disappointing to see that kind of slow down happening at all.

Once you do finish the 7-8 hour campaign you unlock Overkill mode, which is essentially new game plus except you can carry every weapon at once. Which you should've been able to do in the first playthrough. Also, if you managed to get every Skillshot for a certain weapon, you'll unlock infinite ammo for it which is definitely fun. But once I'd finished the game on Hard mode, which in all honesty wasn't that hard, I had little motivation to come back to it again. I had the same problem as I did with the original; while Bulletstorm is definitely fun and I'd recommend it to just about anyone who likes first person shooters, once it's over there is virtually no reason to go back, unless you really want to get all the achievements/trophies.

So if you ever see it on sale cheap for about £10-£15 I'd say give it a go, but just remember once you've finished it, chances are you'll be finished with it for good.